Gummo

UPC: 794043523625

Studio: New Line Home Video

MPAA Rating: R   Contains:[Violence, Nudity, Adult Situations, Strong Sexual Content, Not For Children, Profanity]

Summary: In this elliptical ensemble piece, which marks the directorial debut of indie bad boy Harmony Korine, the teens of tornado-scarred Xenia, OH, kill cats, tape their boobies, arm-wrestle, bathe, cross-dress, huff glue, avoid perverts, pay to have sex with retarded girls, lift makeshift dumbbells to the strains of Madonna's "Like a Prayer," fight, cuss, shave their eyebrows, undergo cancer treatment, euthanize senior citizens, and pee on passing cars. A hallucinatory barrage of images and scenarios with little in the way of traditional plot, Gummo has been variously described as a surrealist joke, a visual poem, and a worm's-eye view of white-trash suffering. The main characters include Solomon (Jacob Reynolds), who sells cat carcasses to a middleman who procures them for use at a local Chinese restaurant; his mother (Linda Manz), who teaches him to tap dance while reminiscing about her dead husband; Tummler (Nick Sutton), a mullet-haired local sex symbol; a midget (Bryant L. Crenshaw); a pair of boy-crazy, bleach-blond sisters named Dot (Chloe Sevigny) and Helen (Carisa Bara); a slut with a lump in her breast (Lara Tosh); a group of drunken louts; and Bunny Boy (Jacob Sewell), who wanders the town enigmatically in a pair of long pink ears. In between scenes of these characters enacting their bizarre routines, Korine intersperses impressionistic and quasi-documentary scenes with voice-over narration that ranges from incest memoirs to arty dialogue along the lines of "He's got what it takes to be a legend: He's got a marvelous persona." Shot just outside Nashville, TN, Gummo includes costume designs by Korine's then-girlfriend, Chloe Sevigny, who also plays Dot and who previously starred in the Korine-scipted, Larry Clark-directed Kids. Jacob Reynolds would go on to appear in Getting to Know You, though few of the director's other discoveries have appeared on film since. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

Category: Avant-garde / Exp

Awards: Film Presented – Telluride Film Festival

Features: Widescreen version of the film
2.0 stereo Surround
English subtitles and closed captions
Animated photo gallery with commentary by director Harmony Korine
Cast and crew filmographies

Gummo

Format: Digital Video Disc (DVD)

Release Date: 03/20/2001

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Theatre Wide-Screen

Audio: 2 PCM stereo

Runtime: 95 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) English

Subtitles: English

Region: USA & territories, Canada

Chapters: Side #1
0. Scene Selections
1. Main Title [4:03]
2. Meet Tummler [3:28]
3. Beauty Secrets [4:40]
4. Jehovah Witnesses [2:23]
5. "I Was About Four Years Old..." [1:08]
6. Cats by the Pound [1:45]
7. Cat Tales [1:46]
8. Into the Woods [3:08]
9. Kill the Rabbit [2:26]
10. A.d.d. [2:54]
11. Hug Me [3:02]
12. Jarrod Wiggley [2:45]
13. Cherry Pie [5:06]
14. Passing Time [3:51]
15. Working Out [3:41]
16. The Albino [1:20]
17. Party Man [:39]
18. Around Town [1:34]
19. Family Matters [2:22]
20. David and Goliath [5:41]
21. Beauty and Illusions [4:34]
22. Entering and Breaking [5:34]
23. A Doll's House [5:22]
24. Lost Cat! [4:16]
25. Bath Time [4:39]
26. Crying [2:57]
27. End Credits [3:45]

Brian J. Dillard

Although it's not for the weak of heart or the easily offended, this bizarre offering from precocious auteur Harmony Korine certainly is amusing and disturbing in equal measures. Say what you will about a hipster New York director wallowing in the go-nowhere lives of a bunch of dirt-poor rural teens, but these disjointed vignettes have both a traffic-accident magnetism and a surreal beauty. Korine spent part of his childhood in Nashville, near where Gummo was filmed, and his stylistic choices here blur the distinctions between documentary, improvisation, and fictional filmmaking. It's hard to know how to take some of this stuff; the writer/director exerts no discernible point of view beyond a hint of detached amusement. But the film's uncertainty is precisely what makes it so refreshingly honest. The sheer crassness of some of the scenarios -- a boy discovering a lump in the breast of the girl he's feeling up, a retarded teen turning tricks while her brother/pimp tweaks his nipples, and Korine himself jokily propositioning a gay African-American dwarf while recounting tales of being sodomized as a child -- may rankle. The absurd humor and outr? imagery, however, should go over well with the urban sophisticates at whom the film is pitched. Korine's muse, Chloe Sevigny, turns in the most indelible of her many white-trash chic performances, trumping even her celebrated role in Boys Don't Cry. Meanwhile, newcomers Jacob Reynolds, Nick Sutton, and Jacob Sewell, among others, make quite an impression with their v?rit?-tinged performances. Character actor Max Perlich enjoys a brief but memorable cameo, while Days of Heaven actress Linda Manz provides a hilarious tap dancing lesson and a few wonderful maternal harangues. Whether all of this adds up to much is for the viewer to decide, but for adventurous cinephiles, Gummo certainly offered up one of the least-predictable American indies of the late '90s. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Cary Woods  Producer 
Ruth Vitale  Executive Producer 
Harmony Korine  Director 
Harmony Korine  Screenwriter 
Stephen Chin  Executive Producer 
Jacob Reynolds  Actor 
Nick Sutton  Actor 
Jacob Sewell  Actor 
Darby Dougherty  Actor 
Chloë Sevigny  Actor 
Carisa Bara  Actor 
Linda Manz  Actor 
Max Perlich  Actor 

Country: USA